1 posts categorized "commentary"

August 12, 2010

When does a critic's right to an unpopular opinion become not a right, but a wrong?

A funny thing happened in Cleveland last week involving a newspaper, an orchestra, a critic suing both parties, and a stink that went back to 2008. That year, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reassigned its classical music critic, Donald Rosenberg, so that he no longer reviewed his beat's primary force, the Cleveland Orchestra, concentrating instead on other arts stories and reviews.

At issue was one person's opinion of another person's musical skill. In his orchestra coverage Rosenberg regarded music director Franz Welser-Most as disappointing and lackluster. For years Rosenberg had the support of his editor-in-chief, Doug Clifton, which, as any daily newspaper critic can tell you, is a good thing to have when angry arts administrators come calling to complain that a critic doesn't "get it."

But editors come and go. Despite his public support of Rosenberg, Clifton cautioned his successor, Susan Goldberg, about concerns regarding the paper's harsh coverage of Welser-Most. Goldberg also heard an earful from the orchestra's management and other factions of the community about Rosenberg's reviews and reports, which included extensive tour chronicles written by Rosenberg while accompanying the orchestra overseas. (In one piece, the critic quoted Welser-Most describing his Ohio city as "an inflated farmers village.")

In court last month, Goldberg said she took Rosenberg off the orchestra beat because "a hefty chunk of the community was saying (he) was biased and unfair and that he was compromising our integrity." She likened his perceived vendetta against the orchestra's music director, who has received mixed reviews internationally, to "a restaurant reviewer deciding the steak is tough before he even goes to the restaurant."

...as Waldo Lydecker in "Laura."

Rosenberg's lawsuit was against the Musical Arts Association, overseer of the Cleveland Orchestra. He charged it with pressuring his newspaper into his reassignment. He also sued the newspaper for age discrimination. (He was 57 at the time, replaced by a younger reporter.)

The jury didn't buy either count. Last week, after losing his case though retaining his job as a Plain Dealer arts writer, Rosenberg told the Los Angeles Times: "We knew from the outset that we would be charting unexplored waters. … I felt the issues of freedom of expression and critical independence needed to be addressed."

I don't know a single critic who doesn't feel seriously conflicted about this mess. Had Rosenberg indeed become an ineffective one-note harangue on the subject of the music director? Some feel he had.

On the other hand: Rosenberg's previous editor, Clifton, backed his critic for years. During Clifton's tenure, the paper's publisher was also an orchestra trustee, as is the current publisher (a common, civic-minded occurrence in many cities). "We must tread lightly on the independence of our critic," Clifton once said. "To overrule him in the face of protest would make a mockery of the critical process." Which is exactly what his successor did.

From Rosenberg's perspective, he was doing his job, adversarial and "unsupportive" as that job appeared to at least some of those he covered. From the paper's perspective, he was overdoing it. From the orchestra's perspective, they're now getting friendlier critical coverage.

The triangular relationship among critic, newspaper and artistic community can get sticky — in Rosenberg's instance, legally so. But that stickiness is to be expected. It's a good sign. Everyone's pushing back and forth to defend their beliefs and passions.

There is so much fear and self-censorship in the critics' ranks in America today. There are so few full-time salaries. You can smell the caution and paranoia in too many reviews weighed down by generalities and a stenographer's devotion to "objectivity," which isn't what this endeavor is about at all. It's about informed, vividly argued subjectivity.

In 2003 a colleague of mine from my LA Times days, art critic Christopher Knight, reviewed an anti-war art exhibit. This came at a time when President George W. Bush was a couple of months away from prosecuting a war some felt was based on a pretty slippery set of excuses. Knight's review came out swinging, calling Bush's foreign policy "imbecilic." In my own theater reviews from that time, dealing with politically charged material, I expressed similar opinions and probably did so once too often, or too ham-handedly. These things happen. We live in the world; we write about more than the thing we saw the night before.

Two weeks after Knight's review was published, a peculiar editor's note appeared in the Times, apologizing not for an error of fact or omission but for the review's tone. Then-editor Dean Baquet overruled the arts editors and recanted Knight's "unusually harsh political judgment," as the editor's note put it. Knight's political opinions "should not have been published."

While Knight probably would've been more effective wielding a rapier than a bludgeon, I've been there. I've led a review with an assertion or an idea that would've been more profitably placed somewhere else, or phrased more deftly, in the same piece of criticism. These are discussions that should take place between a critic and an editor before something gets posted online, not after. It's called "editing," and I'm amazed anew every time I talk to a critic who believes editing consists of evading an editor's input altogether.

Approached the wrong way criticism is an inherently arrogant and narcissistic pursuit, yet what I'm left with, increasingly, is how humbling it is. It's hard to get a review right for yourself, let alone for anyone reading it later. It's even harder to be an artist worth writing and reading about, because so much conspires against even an inspired artist's bravest efforts.

Criticism is a way of writing about life, and the world, and a symphony's place in it, or a performer's, or a photograph's. Or a demagogue's. The other day Fox commentator Glenn Beck went after funding for the arts and public libraries, likening both to a society gorging itself on "Mountain Dew and Cheetos" while riots raged in streets, a society unable to afford police protection because of all the money going to "stupid, snotty" opera houses.

Opinions like that call for a counter-opinion or two. And no matter how frightening the economy, we must remind ourselves that we demonize the humanities (I mean, libraries? Who the hell is against libraries?) at the risk of becoming a nation we don't want to become.

As the Cleveland situation asserted, no critic has a "right" to a compensated opinion. We serve at the pleasure of our employers. And yet we're only worth reading when we push our luck and ourselves, and remember that without a sense of freedom, coupled with a sense that we cannot squander it, we're just filler. As David Mamet said to a gathering of theater critics back in 1978: If you are not "striving to improve and to write informedly and morally and to a purpose, you are a hack and a plaything of your advertisers."

The advertisers are fewer now. Times are not easy. But a critic must write as if he has everything and nothing to lose, just as a filmmaker or an artistic director or a music director should have no choice but to aim high and dig deeply and damn all the rest of it. Otherwise, it's steady as she goes and one more paycheck (if you're fortunate) gratefully received, and that simply is not good enough.

About this blog

Conversations about film, the bad and the beautiful. Your host is Michael Phillips, who was born in the year of "The Hustler," "La Notte" and "Flower Drum Song." Looking for Michael Phillips' movie reviews? Find them at chicagotribune.com/movies

Past posts

Affiliate links disclaimer:

Clicking on the green links will direct you to a third-party Web site. Bloggers and staff writers are in no way affiliated with these links that are placed by an e-commerce specialist only after stories and posts have been published.